Can you transplant memories? Sea snail study suggests yes

Are memories movable? That was the question a UCLA neurobiologist sought to answer in an experiment involving sea snails.

The sizable mollusks—also known as California sea hares—have long been favored for neurobiological research because they possess the largest neurons in the animal kingdom. They also have very few neurons, making it easier to tell which ones are responsible for particular behaviors.

David Glanzman, the UCLA neurobiologist whose team conducted what it calls a memory transplant, first implanted wires in some snails to deliver electronic shocks. "We induced a very simple kind of memory in the snails called sensitization. The result is, their reflexes were greatly enhanced. If we touched their skin, they'll contract very strongly," Glanzman told CNN.

The scientists then extracted RNA from the trained snails' nervous system and injected it into untrained ones. "Twenty-four hours later, we tested the reflexes of those snails, and they showed the same reflexes of those that had been given electrical shocks," Glanzman said, suggesting a new clue about how memory operates physically.

Some scientists are dubious. "It's interesting, but I don't think they've transferred a memory," Tomás Ryan, who studies memory at Trinity College Dublin, told the Guardian. "This work takes us down an interesting road, but I have a huge amount of skepticism about it."